Managing Crowding and Consumers' Perceived Store Density

Abstract

Determining the right number of customers inside a store (i.e. human or customer density) plays a crucial role in retail management strategies. On the one hand, retailers want to maximize the number of visitors they attract in order to optimize returns and profits. On the other hand, ensuring a pleasurable, efficient and COVID-19-proof shopping experience, would go against an excessive concentration of shoppers. Fulfilling both retailer and consumer perspectives requires a delicate balance to be struck. This chapter aims at supporting retailers in making informed decisions, by clarifying the extent to which store layouts influence (perceived) consumer density. Specifically, the chapter illustrates how new technologies and methodologies (i.e. agent-based simulation) can help in predicting a store layout's ability to reduce consumers' perceived in-store spatial density and related perceptions of human crowding, while also ensuring a certain retailers' profitability.

Citation

Pantano, E. and Willems, K. (2022), "Managing Crowding and Consumers' Perceived Store Density", Retail in a New World, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 43-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-846-420221007